Council approves budget-cutting measures

Mayor Nutter's proposals to freeze tax cuts and hike permit fees to offset a budget crisis cleared a City Council committee yesterday, though some Council members demanded more data to justify the closings of libraries, pools and fire companies.

Six bills aimed at helping to fill in the city's $1 billion deficit in its five-year plan passed Council's Committee of the Whole, with final passage possible Dec. 4.

City Finance Director Rob Dubow said the administration needed passage of the bills before January to start collecting higher fees and imposing stiffer penalties that are part of the mayor's plan to offset shortfalls in tax revenues due to a faltering economy. Those increases, along with a halt to tax cuts until 2015, are estimated to save the city about $260 million over five years.

"The longer we wait, the longer we go without getting the revenues, and the harder it is to fill our budget gap," said Dubow. "It will just get worse."

Part of that plan includes closing 11 libraries, 68 public pools, and seven fire companies, which Nutter announced two weeks ago. Though Nutter provided two binders full of information to Council members this week, some said the documents lacked the hard numbers that went into choosing sites for closure.

"The message seems to be that Council doesn't need or deserve access to this data - rather than looking at the information ourselves and asking hard questions, we should simply trust that the administration has reached the proper conclusion," Councilman Bill Green said. "This attitude evidences disrespect for a coequal branch of government, and it effectively undermines a key vehicle of citizen input into the budget process."

Council has no direct role in choosing those cuts - it is Nutter's decision alone to not spend money. But witnesses yesterday still railed against the library and skating-rink closures. Council's leverage is this: Its approval is required for Nutter's plan to freeze expected wage- and business-tax cuts until 2015, and to increase fees for private alarm systems, building and zoning permits, and a whole host of other charges for city services.

Green eventually voted for all of the bills based on Dubow's promise to provide more detailed information. Council members Curtis Jones Jr. and Jannie L. Blackwell, however, voted against all the bills based on a shortage of information.

Councilman James F. Kenney said it was "crazy" for members to oppose the money-raising plan as a way of protest while the city was in the middle of a crisis. Jones, however, cited the federal $700 billion bailout of the financial industry as an instance where legislators failed to ask hard questions and lost oversight of how the money was spent.

Councilman Frank DiCicco challenged his 16 Council colleagues to shave $12,000 each from their Council budgets to come up with the $200,000 it would cost to to commission an independent study of proposed cuts to the Fire Department.

DiCicco and Council last week called on Nutter to fund an independent study to justify closing five engine companies and two ladder companies.

Nutter refused. Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers instead provided a binder full of information he said was used to make the decision.

DiCicco suggested that Council members, whose individual office budgets average between $400,000 and $500,000, "put our money where our mouth is." DiCicco said he would present a resolution to Council today.